Kill for Me
by LadyLoki89
Summary: Let Me Make You a Martyr story starring Pope. A hired hit, a duffel bag of cash, and a dead redneck drug lord are only the beginning of their twisted tale. After an insane request he would normally be inclined to refuse, Pope finds himself pulled into a woman's quest for revenge on the demons from her past. No matter his choice, he knows he's in for one hell of a ride.
1. Chapter 1

He never brought his clients with him while taking out a mark. It was a personal rule as well as just common sense. Clients made the kill personal, making it too much easier to get caught. Pope avoided detection through years of experience and careful practices. And he never broke his own rules.

That should have been Peter Blake's first clue that his day was about to take a turn. Unfortunately, the local drug lord of what was a glorified hick town knew nothing of Pope's personal code of conduct. All he knew was Pope was the man to turn to when you needed someone gone. And Veronica had been a thorn in his side for too long. Being invited to witness her demise felt like Christmas in July. So Peter accompanied the hitman, following him deep into the woods and in what was considered the middle of nowhere, even in the that neck of the woods.

"What the fuck is she doing all the way out here?" he asked, the beginnings of suspicion starting to prickle the back of his neck. "Probably been hiding right? Bitch knew someone would be waiting at home so she came out here?"

Pope said nothing, keeping his eyes ahead as they moved to the sounds of crushing dead leaves. Peter eyed the glock tucked securely in the back of the hitman's pants and thought of his own piece strapped to his hip. Once it was over, he had decided, he had a few holes he would like to put in the girl himself.

They finally stepped into a clearing and Pope came to a stop, silently pointing ahead to a figure sitting with her back leaned against a tree. Peter had almost expected to find her tied up and bloodied, unable to fight or run anymore. He expected a frightened expression on her face the moment she saw them coming at the very least. Instead she simply sat in a relaxed pose on the forest floor, the cherry on the end of her cigarette glowing brightly as she took a slow, steady drag.

"You should have kept running, bitch!" Peter called out to her. Despite the bizarre circumstances sitting in front of him, it did nothing to quell the arrogance that shaped the core of his being. It did not matter that she could jump to her feet and run at any second or that she could have a weapon on herself that neither of them could see. There was no way she was making it to the end of the day alive. Of this, Peter was certain.

Veronica said nothing but continued to smoke, staying put when Pope began to move again, causing Peter to follow suit. They walked slowly towards her, Pope's hand beginning to reach behind himself for his gun. Peter's own weapon was forgotten as he began to feel nervous. The woman had not said a word or so much as stood up, and the closer they drew, the more irritated he became at her lack of a reaction.

"You know why we're here, don't you?" Peter growled. "End of the line! End of the fucking line for you!" Veronica hardly regarded him, keeping her eyes on Pope who now had his weapon drawn in front of him, not yet taking aim. "Got anything you wanna say to me, girl?" Peter snarled, desperate to assert his dominance on her though it never seemed to stick. Veronica's eyes lazily met Peter's and she took another puff from her cigarette.

"Just that I'm surprised you actually coughed up the money to have me killed." She snuffed out her cigarette and flicked the butt away into the leaves. "Back when I worked for you, you were too much of a tight-ass to afford those kind of luxuries."

Peter scoffed at her. "Well… gotta treat yourself sometimes right? And this here's a real treat for me."

"Yeah, I bet it is," she sighed, turning her eyes back to Pope, the only one who had yet to say a single word. "How much did he pay you? Something like this can't possibly be cheap."

"He paid exactly what it costs," Pope answered flatly.

"Not gonna give me a figure? Or a ballpark?" she inquired.

"Never you mind the particulars," he replied. "If you're trying to find out how much your life is worth, I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you so you may as well forget about it."

Veronica nodded, letting out a slow breath. For a moment she finally looked deflated, Peter grinning at the sight as his fingers began to itch for the firearm he now remembered he was carrying. If Pope did not hurry things along, Peter knew he may end up just doing it himself even if it meant washing his money down the drain.

When Veronica's gaze snapped back up to Pope's, Peter's confidence began to wane. "Actually, sir," she addressed the hitman. "I only ask so as to not insult you…" She rose to her feet slowly, making Peter shift uncomfortably, but Pope remained still, watching Veronica as she reached around to the other side of the tree she had been leaning against. Its trunk had been wide enough to hide the duffel bag she'd placed behind it, but when it came into view, Peter's eyes furrowed in confusion. She hoisted it up with a grunt, then took a step towards them, causing Pope to aim his gun at her face in warning.

"Easy there," she stated coolly, swinging the duffel bag backwards to give her arm enough momentum to toss it at their feet. It landed with a loud crunch on the forest floor, and Pope glanced down briefly, never changing his aim on her. "Go ahead," Veronica encouraged, holding out her empty hands for them to see. "I'm not armed."

"Open it," Pope instructed, keeping his focus on the girl. Peter looked at him, his mouth slightly agape in confusion, but when the hitman's eyes twisted to give him a sidelong glare, he knelt down and tugged open the zipper.

The sight of the stacks of bills made his body tense, and he jumped up with a gasp of, "Jesus Christ almighty…"

"Now," Veronica spoke up to Pope, ignoring Peter entirely. "I respect that you won't discuss particulars with me, but I'm willing to wager what's in this bag is three… maybe four times what that rat paid you. Just a guess." Pope's eyes wandered to the open bag, unable to count all the stacks that lay inside from where he stood, but Peter's increasingly fidgety demeanor confirmed Veronica's words for the three of them. It was far more than his typical fee, let alone what he had actually charged the coward.

Far more than the coward was actually capable of paying in his lifetime.

"To be clear," the woman continued, resuming her seat against the tree. "I ain't paying you just to let me live." Her eyes shifted to Peter, watching the color drain from his face. "Bye, Peter," she crooned in a mocking voice and the man took a step backwards, fumbling for his weapon.

"Pope!" he shouted, but the gunshot that followed cut him off. Pope stood still, smoke lightly rising from the barrel of his gun, and the drug lord dropped with all the grace of a sack of potatoes, never to move again.

Veronica drew another cigarette from her pack and watched the hitman kneel over the duffel bag, sifting through the stacks of bills in an attempt to form a reasonable estimate of what she had just tossed at his feet. "Care to join me?" she called to him after letting him count for a few moments.

Pope slowly looked up at her, watching her light her cigarette and smoke away as if it were just another lazy Sunday afternoon. No duffel bag of cash. No openly bleeding corpse on a bed of leaves. No hitman watching her with suspicion and curiosity. His instincts would have normally warned him that this was a bad idea, but he was filled with too many questions to ignore her. Straightening up, he made his way to her, drawing out his own pack before taking his place against the tree, standing catty corner to her.


	2. Chapter 2

"You gonna tell me where you got that kind of cash?" Pope's question was the first thing spoken in minutes. Long enough for him to finish a cigarette and fish out a Polaroid from his pocket and drop it in the woman's lap. "I assume that was you," he added.

Veronica glanced at the picture she had taken earlier that day of the very duffel bag that now lay beside him. Written on the back in Sharpie ink were the words, "It's a much as it looks. You'll find me here. Bring Blake." Beneath that were coordinates which he had clearly followed to the letter. Otherwise they would not be having this conversation.

"Guilty as charged," she replied, brushing the Polaroid out of her lap. "And if you're worried someone's going to come looking for that bag, don't. I earned that money myself. It's mine to do with as I wish."

Pope did not look at her, giving his cigarette an irritated puff. "You don't feel you owe me details?"

"Never you mind the particulars," she replied with a smirk, mirroring his words and tone exactly. They remained in silence for a few moments, long enough for her to finish her cigarette, and as she snuffed it out, he finally glanced over his shoulder at her.

"Guess the only question left is what is it you want now?"

"Who says I want anything?" she asked, remaining seated against the trunk of the tree.

"You often smoke along people who just tried to kill you?" he asked pointedly.

"You didn't try to do anything," she chuckled. "Coming out here and pointing that gun at me? You and I both know you were just flexing. If you were going to kill me you would have fucking done it. Not tried."

"You still haven't answered my first question. What do you want?" he repeated.

"Just to talk," she answered, rising to her feet.

"I ain't got time for talking. I'm a busy man," he replied cooly.

"Walking corpses can wait. Besides, I'm sure there's enough in that bag to buy me a few minutes of your time."

Pope raised an eyebrow, letting out a sigh of annoyance, then dropped his cigarette to the forest floor and stomped it out. "You've got five minutes, then."

"I have a proposition for you." Veronica stepped in front of him, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her hoodie but her look determined. "There's someone I need dead, and I know you're the guy to go to. But I need to be the one who kills him."

"Then you don't need me," the hitman replied.

"Actually, I do. I may be able to talk my way through a negotiation to save my ass, but I don't know shit about guns or even successfully planning out a kill. Of all the debauched things on my resume, I'm afraid that's the one thing I'm lacking."

Realizing where this was going, he shook his head. "I ain't in the mentoring business, so why don't you just tell me who you want put down and maybe we can talk price."

"Not an option," she replied, shaking her head. "I need to do this myself. And you're my best chance of making that happen."

Pope gave her a skeptical look. "You must think I'm stupid or that I don't know why Peter Blake put a hit on you in the first place." Her brow raised but she said nothing. "Apparently a shipment of his product was hijacked and tainted. A lot of customers almost died and that's really bad for business. If you think for a second that I don't know it was you…"

"Breaking into a badly guarded storage unit to slip a small amount of the wrong chemical into a batch of meth to create some pissed off customers is a lot easier than killing who I need dead," she cut in. "And you and I both know Peter Blake's success was nothing more than dumb luck that was going to run out eventually. He was arrogant and short sighted. Out here in the sticks he could be successful, but if he had tried running his business in an inner city somewhere, he would have been dead before he could even market his first batch. Calling him a drug lord is a fucking joke."

She was not wrong. Even he could not deny that.

"But you're right," she continued. "I did do that. I also was able to track down your house in the middle of fucking nowhere to leave that photograph for you to find. I know exactly what I can fucking do. So believe me when I say I know damn well what I can't do."

He considered her words, his curiosity growing to a dangerous level. Any more and he may actually start to agree to this.

"I will pay you for your time. Whatever amount you feel is fair. I've got a lot saved up from my last job and as you can probably tell, I've barely spent any of it on myself." He looked her up and down. Her ratty jeans, her old hoodie. She certainly did not seem the type capable of carrying around a duffel bag stuffed with that much cash.

"Who's your mark?" he asked, still needing to know what she was trying to get herself into.

"I'm going after Jackson."

At her words, the hitman cracked a smile and scoffed at her loudly, shaking his head while taking a few paces around her. "You are out of your goddamn mind. That ain't never gonna happen."

"It needs to happen," she insisted.

"Joseph Jackson," he repeated, watching her with amusement. "Girl, what you're asking is equal to planning a hit on the President of the United States. Ain't nothing I can show you that would get you ready to do that. You better get that stupid idea out of your head now, before you get yourself fucking killed."

"You think I'm stupid?" she asked. "I have no intention of going after him straight off. To go after the President, you don't charge the oval office. You take out his security, his resources. You hit him where it hurts until he's weak." At this, Pope came to a realization and looked at her stunned.

"Peter Blake's death was planned from the beginning," he stated. "You drove him after you so that he would hire me to find you and then we would meet. But your intent to kill him was just as important as your intent to get my attention."

At this, she nodded. "Peter Blake's drug empire, if you can even call it that, paired nicely with Joseph Jackson's work. Blake provided the drugs to keep the girls complacent and numb, and Jackson's girls would help acquire new customers for Blake while Jackson kept a percentage of the profits. Taking Peter Blake out is a good start to hitting Jackson where it hurts."

"I can't argue that," Pope agreed with her. "But it won't be hard to replace him. And as long as Jackson has his product, he'll have his business which gives him power and resources you ain't ready to reckon with."

"Women," Veronica snapped. "Not product. They're women. And don't you dare let me catch you calling them that again."

The hitman stifled a laugh. "Mighty touchy for someone clearly on the warpath."

"You're goddamn right I am," she answered in a cold tone. "Joseph Jackson needs to die and I need to be the one to end him. But I can't do that without your help." She took a step closer, her eyes locked onto his. "Teach me how to kill someone. Teach me how to do it right. I ain't asking you to play a part in whatever happens to Jackson. I'm only asking for the tools to do it. And like I said, I will pay you well for your time."

Pope stared her down for several minutes, visibly tossing the idea in his head which she took as a sign of progress.

"Tell you what," he said at last. "Got a job I got planned later tonight. You come with me, show me what you got… and maybe I'll consider it."

Veronica gave a nod without hesitation. "Done."


End file.
